How bad was the Bernier trade ? How many 2nd and 3rd round picks actually make the NHL let alone play 500 games nad play in the top nine for contending teams and fucking contribute in the playoffs ? You act like Bernier was paid 4 million a season and counted on to be a huge part of the team. He provided good depth for two seasons in the top nine for tow pics who may or may not make it . You act as though heaven and earht were moved to acquire Steve Bernier. [/quote]

I never said the trade was bad. It was a reasonable gamble at the time. It looked good on paper. Bernier never developed the way he was projected.

What I did say was that Gillis looked foolish when Bernier signed the offer sheet. Don't you agree a good GM should have enough foresight to have a deal agreed to in principal before dealing for him?

Vader wrote:I never said the trade was bad. It was a reasonable gamble at the time. It looked good on paper. Bernier never developed the way he was projected.

What I did say was that Gillis looked foolish when Bernier signed the offer sheet. Don't you agree a good GM should have enough foresight to have a deal agreed to in principal before dealing for him?

Here's the funny thing, MAYBE, just MAYBE, Gillis thought he had a shot at Backes when he signed him on July 1. That might explain the offer sheet. Blues match, Gillis goes looking, Bernier trade, Blues offer sheet, Canucks match. What a shocking turn of events. Piss your bed years later over it.... the point is, as has been the point this entire thread, it's a NOTHING MOVE! Most of Gillis' trades are average!! A trade you admit is a good one, a slight overpayment on a contract for a team that is not against the cap, and he gets moved out after 2 years. Holy Fuck, what a disaster.... Jesus.

Gillis got caught with his pants down on the Bernier offer sheet, plain and simple. I would guess the difference in term between Bernier and Backes illustrates pretty clearly the difference in the way the Blues valued the two players at the time - ie. if the Canucks were going to call their bluff and pretty much just throw away a third round pick they'd just dealt away to acquire Bernier, at least the Blues wouldn't end up with a three year term paying Bernier's "fuck you" salary. And certainly I don't think many expected him to play so well in the first year that he'd get another raise on his next deal..

As for the Bieksa non-trade, I think most fans had Bieksa dealt although I'm not really sure whether that means much at all. Most had Kesler moving at the deadline, AV fired when Gillis first arrived, Luongo dealt in 2012, etc etc. It's worth mentioning that at the time (summer of 2010) Bieksa had finished up a stretch of three years in which he was pretty poor.. certainly for a top four defenseman. The way things have panned out, in hindsight dumping him for Nikita Filatov or whoever fans were on about at the time would've been disastrous but it certainly wasn't a safe bet that Bieksa was going to return to form the way he has.

Anyway as we can all agree it was an excellent bit of cap management that allowed the Canucks to hold onto all of those defensemen, and kudos to them for managing it.. whether one believes it helped them avert a disaster or enabled them to ice a group that got this team within a hair's width of winning it all. (Or both for that matter.)